


I'll Eat Until I Burst.

by BlobFrog



Series: The Umbrella Academy (with a teensy weensy hint of eating disorders) [3]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anorexia, Binge Eating Disorder, But mainly binge eating, Eating Disorders, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 16:35:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20195341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlobFrog/pseuds/BlobFrog
Summary: He put the slice of pizza to his mouth and took another bite. Even if his stomach hurt and everything felt wrong and one more bite felt like it could kill him. He took another bite.





	I'll Eat Until I Burst.

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so while I was fixing this one up I realised that this one is way more personal than either of the others. This one deals with wayyyy more personal issues.
> 
> Warnings:  
Calorie counting  
Mentions of fasting periods (both on purpose and not)  
Theres probably more but idk.

Five knew what he was doing. He was old enough by now to understand exactly what he was doing and probably why he was doing it too. Being alone for over 40 years made you really good at self-reflection.

He put the slice of pizza to his mouth and took another bite. Even if his stomach hurt and everything felt wrong and one more bite felt like it could kill him. He took another bite. About 500 calories for breakfast. A thousand for lunch. Now he was finishing off this 900-calorie pizza and topping it off with multiple cinnamon rolls. He doesn’t even want to think of the liquid calories he consumed today.

His equations had equations. How much can I eat today? What clothes have the least probability of ripping? Who do I need to kill to fix the timeline?

Today he could eat until his stomach lining burst. Tomorrow and maybe the next day he wouldn’t eat at all. All or nothing is a good way to describe it. Maybe he would forget to eat for another day. And another. A week perhaps. He could go longer than a week without food. He’d done so before when his rations dried out and it was nearly 2 weeks before he could find a place with food. If the things he was consuming during that time could even be considered food.

His stomach still wasn’t full. No matter what he ate he was always hungry. He could ignore it of course. Like previously stated he had felt hunger like this before. He could spend days drifting off with his equations.

His equations.

Over 3000 calories consumed today. He sat there and he knew what he was doing. His body was malnourished. Well his old body was malnourished. This body had experienced some bouts of hunger when Hargreeves wouldn’t allow him dinner after he’d stepped ‘out of line’. However, he knew that the hunger wasn’t really physical. It was all in his mind. His body changed. His mind didn’t. Was it physical hunger?

He knew why he was doing this. He stuffed himself full because even though he knew that in this timeline he could eat at any time without the food ever running out, courtesy of Grace, that his mind was still stuck in a time where everything went wrong. He didn’t know when the next time he would be able to eat would be. So of course, it was best to eat as much as he could while he could. That makes sense, right?

Or maybe the opposite.

He knew what it was like to go hungry. To stay hungry. That meant he didn’t deserve food. He could survive without it. He did survive without much of it. He could just not eat for days on end. He could just avoid the kitchen and all that useless rubbish and just work on his equations. Work on fixing everything because he was the only one who could fix this. 

He knew as much as he needed to know. Some things were a little muddled. Like did he genuinely forget to eat sometimes? Or was he punishing himself? For not doing this earlier, for not fixing this earlier. Maybe it was both. Could it be both.

He finished the last cinnamon roll. 

He stared at the empty plates all around him and looked at his glass. It needed refilling. Today was a whiskey type of day. He didn’t want to put in the effort to make himself any cocktails even if he did crave the mass amounts of sugar in them. He didn’t want to move from the place he had made himself nestled by the fridge.

He knew what was wrong. He did. He does. He knows most things. He’s smart and he knows things. He knows why he does this to himself. He knows why he is purposefully ruining his body. His last body was ruined by circumstance, this one by choice. It was a choice, right?

He chooses to eat, he chooses to starve, to count the calories that go in and out of his body. He has a choice in this. He has complete control over it. Over his cravings over his starving over his life over everything he has choice.

He has a choice.

He knows what he’s doing and why he’s doing it and why there are tears rolling down his face as he calculates the total calories consumed today and he isn’t crying over the number and of course he isn’t crying over the number.

He has control.

He’s 58 years old and he has complete control over his life. 

(He isn’t in control. He has no choice.)


End file.
